British Insurance Awards 2021: Diversity and Inclusion Award

BIA Diversity and Inclusion award
BIA 2021 12 the diversity award
Stuart Sandell, assistant vice-president, sales UK & Ireland, Enterprise Rent-A-Car presents the award to Inshur COO David Daiches

Diversity and Inclusion Award

Winner: Inshur

Shortlisted
  • Ageas
  • Allianz Insurance
  • Bupa UK and Global
  • Covéa Insurance
  • Crawford & Company
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Inshur strives to ensure each team member, customer and candidate feels respected, included and valued regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital or disability status.

Not least because it believes that a diverse, inclusive and equitable company leads to greater business success. And that having a team from different backgrounds with different skills and life experiences provides a multitude of new and interesting perspectives.

As such Inshur was acclaimed for making massive strides in the last 12 months, ensuring it has training, documentation and regular discussions around diversity, equity and inclusion to foster a working environment where every team member is appreciated for the unique value and skills they bring.

In 2020 alone, Inshur also increased female representation and BIPOC/BAME representation significantly while increasing its overall headcount by a third.

On this point, Inshur follow a structured hiring process and trains interviewing teams on hiring for diversity. All of its job adverts are run through a gender decoder to ensure they are neutral at least and feminine-coded at best.

Inshur first ran a salary benchmarking exercise back in February 2020 to ensure it pays fairly across the business and is committed to running a calibration of the benchmarking annually.

Regardless of gender, all Inshur employees are also now offered 13 weeks fully-paid parental leave (paid inclusive of any statutory pay) at their usual salary to help support them through this ‘exciting time in their life’.

And the feedback indicates Inshur staff buy into what they are doing.

“I joined Inshur just over six months ago and I’ve really been enjoying the ride,” commented one member. “The team made me feel welcome, appreciated and supported from the get-go. Together, we’re working towards creating an environment where everyone can be their authentic self, no matter their background. But what I love most about Inshur is that diversity – of any kind – is not only accepted but is actively encouraged and celebrated.”

Another said: “I work part-time hours around two small children. The flexibility of the role has been fantastic for me. The fact the company has family-friendly policies and is aware of the issues that underrepresented groups, including women, experience in the workplace, has allowed me to feel comfortable to get on with my job in my own time. Having that freedom to do my job to the best of my ability at times that work for me is completely invaluable to me.”

As to the judges, one gushed: “Authentic with lots of evidence to quantify progression in BAME and female representation. The fact they are able to measure workforce DEI also confirms that the culture is one of trust where employees have elected to share their DEI data, voluntarily. Lots of transparency too – advertising salary bands etc. This is a organisation with a genuine commitment to its culture and D&I.” 

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